“Darkening Skies” — Willard Marcell Theory

September 03, 2008

“My heart returns to you” vocalist John Marcell incants repeatedly, but this is no spell for romantic reconciliation. Tribal drums and disorienting sonic swirls give the track the shade of a pagan ritual mourning the day’s death, while that guitar solo at midway mark expertly combines Hendrix’s earth and air elements, eventually blotting out the sun with flung clumps of mud. “These are the signs” that disembodied voice concludes, resigned to the chilling inevitability of light’s regression to void, “in the darkening skies.”